Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday June 25, 2010 @01:50PM
from the only-a-couple-of-decades-late dept.

GovTechGuy writes "Experts at a Congressional hearing Thursday said the government needs to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to reflect changes in technology, notably location-based services. On one hand, legal experts argue tracking a mobile user's location should require a higher burden of proof than simply intercepting their communications. On the other hand, first responders may need location data in order to save lives and respond to 911 calls. Either way, expect legislation from the committee later this year."

Of course, the trick is to inform the target in a way that doesn't inform those around them. My phone automatically lets out a "whoop" sort of noise when I call 911 which I believe is informing me that it is now making my location data available. This seems like a reasonable thing, but if you're calling to report a home invasion of some sort and you're hiding from the person who broke in, the loud whoop seems like a serious problem. In fact, any noise or light seems to be a problem in that sort of scenario.

This is easy for the firetruck or EMS to handle because they've got the coordinates and they're responding immediately.

Not necessarily. You could be reporting a fire in your downstairs neighbor's apartment. Imminent danger to human safety trumps privacy rights if they are in conflict. In some cases, imminent danger to property can also trump privacy. You want the fire department to put an axe through your neighbor's door now, not after calling his hotel room in the Bahamas. Society is pretty okay with emerg

That is not an issue at all or at least not the issue. The grand partent wanted the operator of the device to be informed imediately when when their location is being reported or accessed. That could be something as simple as the words "Location tracked" printed on the cell phones display. Its your location that is being remported and you who needs to be informed of this fact. If you want the fire department to break down your neighbors door because you see smoke, they don't need to inform your neighbor

What they need is easy access to the data, in event of an emergency, and a way to make sure that bypass of the long procedure is ONLY used in emergency. This is, sadly, NOT Uncle Sam's strong suit.

Take Miranda rights. At first, they read them when you got questioned. Then it was decided that, in cases of emergency, that was not needed, and they could delay reading miranda, to deal with an emergency situation. Ok Fair enough.

What they need is easy access to the data, in event of an emergency, and a way to make sure that bypass of the long procedure is ONLY used in emergency. This is, sadly, NOT Uncle Sam's strong suit.

You propose a legal solution, when a technical one would be better. In fact, a technical one already exists. When I dial 911, my phone automatically transmits my location along with the call. When I call anyone else, it doesn't transmit the location. All you really need to do is ensure that location data is only sent to the person you are calling, unless you go through the long legal process. And that's something that, AFAIK, is already done in most cases.

Whoa! the rule is simple. If it is an emergency, and the service in question is acting in a way that would help the person being tracked they can get immediate access to the data. This is the case be it somebody reporting their house is on fire, or that they need an ambulance, or that they are under attack.

However, even in an emergency it would require a warrant to track somebody who is not direct helped by the tracking, such as tracking a suspect under investigation.

My town still has crap like "You can't walk through any city property with a watermelon and fishing pole" from the 1800s.

Now you've stirred my historical perspective curiosity. There must have been some reason for that law being passed.

For the fishing pole, maybe they had a big problem with illegal fishing/poaching on city property? So just ban all fishing poles. Maybe the "no concealed weapons in bars" laws in Texas today will look silly in 200 years? Just like this Electronic Communications Privacy Act law might.

For the watermelon, maybe the city had a monopoly watermelon concession on city property. They wanted to

More likely this is small town politics aimed at one specific person they didn't like rather than a behavior or activity. Then again, maybe someone was using watermelon chunks as bait, and the fish were choking on the seeds. So they made it illegal to look like you were going to attempt that.

My guess would be that if that law was real it was enacted as a subtle way of signalling out poor blacks. Fishing as a means of providing food is well known amongst us poor and everyone knowns how much we like our watermelon.

And when they expire, the renewal should be an updated expiration date, not "Let's make this permanent" like the Patriot Act. I still don't understand why the only choices presented at that time were all or nothing.

On all cell phones it says allow others to use location service or emergency only. No way to ever turn off the locator. Then they would be required to get a warrant to go get the cell phone tower data. So at that point they would definitely need some burden of proof to get that information, most of the time.

Here's an idea: Emergency services can look at the data any time they want, BUT if they look at it without a warrant, it becomes forever fruit of the poison tree. Completely inadmissible in court. AND, anything they get from what they find from that line of evidence is also poisoned.

Ambulances and fire rescue and such wouldn't care, and thus have no hinderance. Police, on the other hand, would have to be very careful and get a warrant, lest they completely screw their investigation.

We called from landlines, and emergency services used the database of location information provided to them by the phone companies that installed the landlines. And yes, if someone was injured in a location without telephones, they did often die.

Bingo. Same way it is now with cell phones. I'll swag it, but I doubt that more than 1 in 100,000 E911 calls are the kind where the caller is unable to tell the operator their location. It makes for high-tension commercial-break cliff-hangers to have the protagonist dial 911 and then pass out, but in real life that seems highly unlikely.

Remember police or EMS pulling up to the house two doors down can delay response time by five minutes or more. There are also numerous cases of ems responders pulling up to a house finding out nothing was wrong and leaving only to find out they were on the wrong side of the road. Or having the wrong apartment number out of hundred of possibles.

The person doesn't have to pass out either having a hard time breathings also causes trouble.

"Needs digital era update" equals "We need law that enables us to track every citizen when ever we feel like it". It's a synonum to "would someone please think about the children" card. And believe me, there's plenty of people who welcome these laws with open arms because "I got nothing to hide. You obviously do, which tells that we need this law". I've seen this many times in our local Finnish news sites.

It's a synonum to "would someone please think about the children" card.

It's funny you should say that, but I'm interested in this because of my children. My kids are old enough to be home alone sometimes, but not old enough to have their own phones yet. The only reason I still have a landline, really, is for them to use when they're home alone. I've considered porting the number over to a prepaid cellphone which I could just leave plugged in for them to use, which would have the advantage that our "home" phone could come with us when traveling. So I am interested in having an

My phone doesn't have GPS, yet the tracking for emergency services is pretty accurate.
Some time ago, I called 911 to report the presence of an obstruction on a freeway. Before I spoke to anyone, the phone call was redirected to the highway patrol and I received an automated message telling me that they knew about the obstruction. To do this, they would have to have a farily accurate location for me and this was without GPS.

A couple of years ago I called 911 to report a burglary in progress across the street. I got PUT ON HOLD for a few minutes before I could talk to anyone at all. "All of our lines are busy, please hold..." and so on.I used to think that "You know you're having a bad day when... you call 911 and they put you on hold." was a joke. Apparently it's not.

I wrote a letter of complaint about this matter to the City Council, but nothing was ever done other than sending me back an acknowledgment of

Stories of this are all over the web, some abusive cop is walking all over somebody's rights, someone else starts recording them on their cell phone, and the Good Samaritan is arrested for filming the cop under wiretapping laws. Even though it's right out in public and there may be five or ten security cameras recording the same area 24/7.

Several times we have had police show up at our building saying someone in the building dialed 911 and have to do a full scan of the building before leaving because someone set a notebook on their phone or somehow had the 9 button jammed down. Our company issued Nokia's for some reason were set so that if you hold down 9 it dials 911.

Do you know of any country, in any continent, in any period of written history (maybe even before that) that this was not happening, namely the leaders/chiefs/kings/presidents not being able to "carry on doing what they liked", either in the open or in secret?

I propose that to the fullest extent permissible by whatever law they propose, they further agree to have every member of goverment published in real time to a publically available website, and have it published in each day's conressional record.

Okay, the details may need some work, but I think the intent is clear. I'm open to any suggestions on improvement.